European cinema doesn't have as many surefire formulas as Hollywood, but the one described, I think, by Pauline Kael as the "lonely child, clean old man" scenario has long endured. In Jean Becker's bittersweet comedy, the "child" is Germain, a near-village idiot played by a tank-like Gerard Depardieu. The unloved product of his floozy mother's one-night stand, he has put up with mockery and abuse his whole life. Replacing the clean old man is a clean old woman, the nonagerian bibliophile of the title, whom Germain meets on a park bench where both have come to count the pigeons. Soon Margueritte is expanding Germain's mind by reading to him. Their first book: Camus's The Plague. What would it be in the inevitable Disney version? Goodnight, Moon? The film's twists don't stop with reading matter, however, as Germain's flashbacks turn ambiguous and his friendship with Margueritte becomes complicated. Though mostly sunny, Afternoons has its chills.

Review: The Pirates! Band of Misfits Peter Lord, animator behind claymation staples Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run , directs this very British, very dry romp on the high seas during the time when Britannia did indeed rule the waves.

Review: The Raven If only Poe could find the solution to the mystery in his own texts! Or if the filmmakers made any use of them.

Review: Jiro Dreams of Sushi Eighty-five-year-old Jiro, with his unchanging expression and bald pate, resembles a wizened turtle. Leaving home at age 9 and forced to fend for himself, he would become the world's greatest sushi chef.

Review: The Hunger Games More powerful than fear in subduing a society, says President Snow (Donald Sutherland) in this overstuffed adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins's trilogy, is hope.

Review: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth The Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis were supposed to be a means for poor farmers and field workers to find big-city opportunities.

Review: Mirror Mirror Had Tarsem Singh given his dwarves names that described his film they might be: Ugly, Creepy, Murky, Listless, Pathological, Sadistic, and Inane.

Review: Losing Control Bostonians have celebrated the city's rebirth as a shooting location for filmmakers. Had they endured Valerie Weiss's locally made Losing Control , I suspect most would welcome another molasses disaster.

Review: The Wrath of the Titans The folks who gave us the bombastic 3D remake of Clash of the Titans unleash Jonathan Liebesman's Wrath , and it's sensational — if you like being stuffed into a trash can and rolled down a hill.

Review: Battle Royale (2000) In a not-so-distant future society that has devolved into chaos, Japan's youth run amok, Clockwork Orange –style, and the government has passed an act decreeing that one unruly grade-school class will face off in a battle from which only one will emerge. Sound familiar?

Review: Bullhead What this cattle farmer at the center of talented writer/director Michael R. Roskam's debut feature – Belgium's foreign-language Oscar nominee – lacks, he tries to make up for with steroids.